Dead of the Day: 10-16-1981
Club Melk Weg
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Our Dead of the Day takes us across the pond to Amsterdam and the middle of the 1981 fall European tour (there was a spring ’81 European hop as well). After their shows in France were cancelled, the Dead announced from the stage in Russelheim, Germany, that they would be playing two low-key shows back at the Milky Way club in Amsterdam, where they had sat in for an impromptu acoustic set about a week back. With their equipment already in transit to the next set of gigs, the boys played on borrowed instruments. The first night was great, but the next – our Dead of the Day – blew the doors completely off. There is something fabulous about the Dead trekking halfway across Europe just so they can play again in a hash bar and, what’s more, doing it with borrowed instruments. This is Club Dead at its best with an acoustic first set and Bobby taking control on his birthday in the second.
The acoustic opening set is interesting, reprising their long stretch of acoustic openers at the same time the previous year (the recordings of which became Dead Set and Reckoning as well as some nice boots). Here, the playing is very nice, but not quite as precious as in 1980. Instead, what you get is some rocking, more freewheeling versions, like on The Race Is On where they sound like the Grateful Dead impersonating a bar band, which is not at all a bad thing. But even in that framework, there are some fabulous, hair-raising tunes, like the amazing Bird Song. It is just a great acoustic version with Phil playing a subdued, but essential role and the entire band setting off on a stratospheric jam. The Cassidy and Ripple, the latter of which closes the set, are both not to be missed as they are intimate, raggedy, and so beautiful.
The second set gets right into it with a lovely, open, and ranging Playin’. It never gets too spacey, but that is part of its allure. Eventually, the Playin’ makes a heady segue into Hully Gully. Steeped in history as it is – a hit for The Olympics in 1959, it had sparked a trans-Atlantic dance craze – Hully Gully is a classic one-off cover for the Dead. And you have to wonder whether it was a little gift for Bobby from the rest of the boys on his birthday. The Wheel, one of the rare Jerry tunes in the second half, comes out next, all subdued and luscious. Through so much of the second set, though, rock star Bobby comes out in full force, giving us a raging Gloria and a huge breakout of Lovelight. The boys still deliver up tasty jamming on all of it, but, perhaps no more – after the initial Playin’ – than on the fast-paced Going Down The Road Feeling Bad. All told, this is not the Dead you might be used to, but this is a fresh setlist and some high-energy – on both the acoustic and the later electric set – club playing that is so tasty.
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